Not so. From the same link as in my previous post:
Daniel
Then what is the advantage of the present system?
In fact it is a decent question. Although the answer is not too difficult. Acts of charity are haphazard and voluntary. Taxation is mandatory.
There’s no planning and administering a public policy that depends entirely upon ongoing goodwill. By contrast a reliable income stream from taxation allows the large scale and intricate planning to provide such services.
Secondly, publicly funded policies are accountable to the enfranchised public. By contrast agents of charity act at will. Doctors and people of mercy are entitled to prefer who they will.
How do you know that these are full time positions? I know that a common practice here is to hire people for less than full-time and as “temporary” workers becuase I believe there are tax/law benefits for the company.
How much are these people getting in welfare?
You’re right. I shouldn’t have included those who don’t want to work. Nonetheless, 4% is considered to be full employment simply because there’s a certain percentage of the population that is between jobs, or temporarily unqualified for the available jobs. At unemployment levels below this, you start to see serious wage inflation as employers bid for a pool of available employees smaller than the pool of jobs currently unfilled.
And this is a problem because…? Seriously, it seems to me that this would represent a free-market means of redistributing wealth to the poor, inasmuch as the poor would end up with a larger percentage of total wealth. And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
Daniel
There’s no doubt that the Appalachian region is economically depressed. But that brings up yet another disincentive effect of government aid - it keeps people in areas that cannot support them. Back before there were massive social programs, the population was much more mobile. Remember, 'Go west, young man!" People routinely moved from depressed areas to ones where there was more opportunity.
Here in Canada we subsidize our Atlantic fishermen. As a result, they overfished the sea, and times got even harder. So we subsidized them more. We wound up with a population unsustainably large for the region, and more fisherman than there are jobs. Another permanent underclass.
In Maine, there are no subsidies for fishermen. And the economy there looks very different as a result. People know they have to make their own way, so industries cropped up to employ them in the off-season. Many fishermen are trained in two careers - fishing in summer, something else in winter. They adapted. In Canada in the off-season, people just sit on the dole. Maine’s economy is much healthier, its poverty rate lower, and when polled, the people of Maine are much happier than those in Atlantic Canada who feel they are unjustly treated despite getting all kinds of government aid that the people of Maine had to do without.
If it’s wage inflation because there are jobs that need to be done that are going unfilled, then it’s a brake on economic growth. But more to the point, it’s an indicator that there is work for those willing and able to do it.
True. The true rate is supposedly closer to 10%
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2004/duboff0204.html
One of the alternative measures shows that if both involuntary part-timers and discouraged workers were added to the unemployment rate as officially measured, the rate for November 2003 would stand at 9.5 percent of the labor force, instead of the official 5.9 percent
And the reason places like Europe have such high unemployment rates (10-20%) is partially because they keep better track of the subject.
Another problem is that only 133 million individual tax returns were filed in 2005
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=133100,00.html
There are 300 million people in the US though. I don’t know how many are above 16 or how many are actively looking for work but 133 million out of a population of 300 million would imply that only 44% of the american public files tax returns. I realize alot of people don’t file taxes (some students, those under 18, the retired, homemakers, etc) but still its hard to believe that with only 44% of the population filing taxes that unemployment is only 5%.
The book ‘don’t think of an elephant’ is a good book on the subject of what makes on conservative vs liberal
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931498717/103-1625595-9778254?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance
Here is a description of the nurturant parent vs. strict parent worldviews
“Able” seems to me to be the rub.
Daniel
I always favored the idea that a conservative was a liberal that just got mugged, and a liberal was a conservative that just got arrested. Of course, ymmv.
I’d need a cite for that to believe that; despite the allure of the Old West myths, my understanding has always been that people generally WEREN’T mobile in times past.
That’s simply not true, though. The problem with Atlantic Canada (such as it is, anyway) is a lack of industry and investment, not overpopulation. Atlantic Canada is sparsely populated and has essentially one large urban area. If you started moving people out, the economy wouldn’t get better; if anything, it would get worse.
The economic benefit to more people moving from Truro to Toronto, or Edmundston to Edmonton, is that THOSE PEOPLE would be better off. The people left behind wouldn’t be better off at all. The solution to their stgnany economies is lower taxes and more investment, insofar as that’ll work.
I think you and I are 75% in agreement in general on these issues, but I think some of your claims are a bit talking-pointish and simplistic.
Maine is well below the U.S. average in per capita income, and is significantly poorer than any other Northeastern state:
Per Capita Personal Income 2003, $US:
Connecticut 45,398
Massachusetts 41,801
New York 38,228
New Hampshire 37,040
Rhode Island 33,733
Vermont 32,770
Maine 30,566
Cite: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104652.html
Relative to the rest of the United States, it’s quite comparable in terms of its relative wealth to Nova Scotia’s position in Canada.
I say that a liberal is a conservative who just got downsized.
Daniel
The cost of living difference is huge between Southen and Northern New England. You can’t compare per capita income directly between them at all. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have large urban areas and are among the most expensive states in the country.
Maine is mostly rural and is known as a rather affluent state nationally.
I don’t know anyone who considers Maine affluent. Once the timber was cut the jobs moved west. Sure there are rich people who “summer” there (the Bushes for example), but taking care of rich people for three months a year does not make a great living.
Ever read William Lloyd Warner? That income is clearly lower-lower class. Or maybe upper-lower class. Nowhere near middle class!"
I guess it would depend on what times were talking about. In the 1700’s and 1800’s, not so much. But that was more of a technological limitation. Later on, when it became possible for people to move long distances easily, they did so. Look at the rate of immigration to Canada and the U.S. in the first half of this century. If you were poor and German, a good way to escape your lot was to emigrate to Canada or the U.S. Today if you’re poor and German, you’re more likely to be on social assistance.
I don’t mean the area is overpopulated in general. I meant the population of working fisherman is greater than the area would sustain without government subsidies. And also, the existence of financial support in the off season has suppressed the need to diversify. That’s one of the bigger differences between Maine and Atlantic Canada. Maine’s economy is more diverse.
Not true. If more fishermen left the industry, that would leave more fish for the rest. By subsidizing fishermen, you put them all in a position where they need subsidies to survive. You create a culture of dependency.
Of course, I agree that lower taxes and more investment will also help.
If you can find a transcript to an episode of W5 that aired about ten years ago, look it up. The whole show was an examinatiion of the Atlantic fishing industry and a comparison against the equivalent Atlantic states in the U.S.
I never claimed otherwise. All I said was that their economy is more sustainable and that the residents there were in general happier than those in Atlantic Canada. The W5 episode I mentioned actually surveyed both populations to guage happiness and satisfaction with government and with their jobs. The people of Maine scored higher in all accounts.
They interviewed some of the people, and the interviews were quite telling. I remember one Atlantic fisherman being asked why he thought he should be paid by the government to sit in the off-season, and his response was, “What else are we going to do? We have a right to a living, and you can’t fish in winter. We are only asking for what we deserve!” And he was quite angry about it. He felt the government wasn’t doing enough for the fishermen, and that they were worth just as much as those who had year-round jobs and should be compensated accordingly.
Then they asked a resident of Maine about what they should do in the off-season, and the answer was, 'Find some other work do to. We have to - you can’t fish." And so they did. The show went on to show how other seasonal industries had moved into the state to take advantage of the glut of labor in the wintertime. So people would fish in the summer, and work as store clerks in the winter. Or maybe they’d set up small businesses maintining boats or working on engines. None of them expected the government to somehow provide for them.
But the kicker was the survey of satisfaction rates. Despite the fact that the Canadians received far more government support than the Americans, and didn’t have to work as hard in the winter, they were much angrier, more demanding, and more dissatisfied with their government and their lifestyle.
It was very illuminating.
Yes, and Nova Scotia requires heavy equalization payments to maintain it. As I said, it’s not sustainable. Permanent dependency. In fact, Nova Scotia just got a ‘unique’ agreement that they would be allowed to keep their full equalization payments for 8 years even if their fishing and resource revenue increases dramatically. The Martin government did this in recognition of Nova Scotia’s ‘unique position in Canada’. In 2001, 37% of Nova Scotia’s provincial revenue came from equalization payments.
The median family income in Canada is $55,000. A family income of $35,000 would put you in the 3rd or 4th decile, which would be lower middle class.
And btw, the world average per-capita income is about $8,500, meaning that a job in a fast-food restaraunt here in Edmonton will pay you just about twice the world average income. If you remove all the 3rd world countries from the mix and include only the industrial economies, the world average is about $18,000, or just about what you’d make at a fast food restaraunt.
You still haven’t shown that those jobs are full-time